Design driven innovation and the large firm: Challenges and insights

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Design driven innovation and the large firm: Challenges and insights

Cucu, G.

(2012) Faculty of Geosciences Theses

(Master thesis)

Abstract

Design is increasingly being perceived by scholars and firms alike as a strategic resource linked to innovation and business strategy. Companies like Apple, Bang and Olufsen, Nintendo, and Procter and Gamble have adopted design into the core of their corporate strategies, and others are following suit. While design was traditionally ... read more confined to product form aesthetics, design is now being recognized as dealing with symbolic meanings that impact consumer emotions.
Despite the prevalence of design in today’s society, researchers have just begun to map the design-driven innovation process. Not surprisingly, the challenges that may arise in the process have not yet been addressed, making what little research exists in this area unconnected to the practical context of firms. This is especially problematic for large firms that are often entrenched in established routines and practices and therefore tend to have difficulty shifting their strategies in new directions. While the design driven innovation process overlaps in many respects with the radical innovation of technology one, dif-ferences do exist and research must fill in this gap in order to extend the understanding of this relatively new field of inquiry. As such, this research investigated the challenges that large firms have faced during the development of design-driven innovations, and how they have addressed those challenges. The find-ings show that large firms face five main challenges:
1) Delivering a perceptible benefit. Frequent involvement of users during product development mitigated this challenge for many firms as it helped to gauge in on how to best deliver the product benefits to consumers. Additionally, extensive investment in marketing campaigns enabled firms to acquaint consumers to the innovation and convey its main benefits.
2) Market resistance. Management of consumer expectations was deemed to be most important in mitigating this challenge, as this helped firms convey the potential of the innovation and create excitement around the innovation which, in turn, generated a higher demand.
3) Finding a divisional home. Trial and error helped project teams to eventually identify an appro-priate business model.
4) Translating knowledge into practical applications. Extensive workshops with multidiscipli-nary personnel were deemed highly important in synthesizing and translating acquired knowl-edge in order to feed it into product development.
5) Cross-functional communication and collaboration. Methods used to tackled this challenge in-cluded involvement of all disciplines early on during product development, establishing a com-mon vision for the project, and appointing specific team members to mediate conflicts between the different disciplines
Key enablers that helped project teams mitigate the above-mentioned challenges include the focus on the overall innovation experience which involves an awareness and understanding of how all relational as-pects of the product (e.g. the product itself and its contextual environment) create an emotional experi-ence for the end-user. Additionally, innovations with an attractive design tended to denote the benefits of the innovation more clearly to consumers, and it also helped to generate positive publicity for the firm. Having a project team that consisted of members who were driven, loyal, flexible, open, among other characteristics, decreased collaboration challenges. show less

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